


Score One Betty Cooper

by RocketRabbits



Category: Archie Comics
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Third person past tense, betty deserves good things and to stand up for herself and be treated with respect and, betty leaves archie and veronica and their toxic love triangle, bughead fans do not interact, i love betty cooper, mentions of others - Freeform, midge and moose are good friends, sparse dialogue, time lapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11893143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocketRabbits/pseuds/RocketRabbits
Summary: He was always going to choose Veronica. Everyone knew so.





	Score One Betty Cooper

He was always going to choose Veronica. Everyone knew so. She patronized him and he answered to her bell. He left her behind and she showed him what he missed, rarely having to dry her eyes. They weren’t perfect. They merely failed to crash and burn.

It happened like this: Archie, after a decade of baited deliberating, took Elizabeth Cooper to their junior prom. Beautiful Betty Cooper. Clever and charming Betty Cooper. Foolish and naïve Betty Cooper, who wore her nicest dress and curled her hair just _so,_ only to watch Archie’s eyes wander to. . .  well, any girl who showed her calves, really, but Veronica especially, elegant as she always demanded to be.

She would go on to swear the seduction of Archie was accidental, argue that she can’t just _not_ dress up because he is terrible, and she’d be right. It still wouldn’t stop Betty splashing her grape soda down the front of Veronica’s no doubt designer turtleneck. She’d be right, Betty would reason, but she didn’t have to gloat.

Betty would go on to tell Archie to ditch her number, for real this time, and Jughead would stop him from chasing her, and Riverdale’s core four would be no more.  
  
At the dance, though, she cried. Sobbed. Stifled her wails behind the gym where Midge found her and kissed her sweaty forehead and hugged her closer, whispering soothing words in the same breath as pointedly asking Moose if he could just have a word with Andrews.  
  
As it turned out, he could. Though Moose is famously a man of few coherent thoughts, let alone words, he and Archie rejoined the dance only twenty minutes later, Archie’s eye about as purple as Veronica’s dress. She didn’t dance with him after that, despite their matching. She wouldn’t deign to be seen with him, looking like he did, but Betty’s sobbing slowed when she saw it, and Jughead prodded her shoulder grinning, and that is how it ended:  Betty Cooper, still beautiful with a running nose and puffy eyes, danced with Midge. Snacked with Jughead. Sang to Moose. Had a good time in spite of it. Archie Andrews, on whom purple was not flattering, did it all alone and still fell asleep soundly, assuming nothing had really changed at all.  
  
Come Monday morning, it did. Veronica, beautiful Veronica, cunning and vulture-like Veronica, swooped in at the first sign of distress, looping her arms around Archie’s neck and kissing the swollen eye she’d laughed at only two nights prior. Score one, Veronica Lodge.  
  
Leave it to a Lodge, she’d later joke, to make Archie Andrews commit to someone.  
  
Leave it to a Cooper, though, to stop giving him a choice.

 

Nevertheless, to Veronica Archie committed. Make no mistake, his commitment did not promise his monogamy, and she never expected it to. His eyes still wandered, to the confusion and rage of Veronica’s disheartened suitors, but he paused before his feet followed. What spare time Veronica did not claim he gave to any girl that would join him in a booth at Pop’s. Despite jealousy issues, it seemed to work fine.  
  
He did try Betty again. He stood hopelessly outside her classrooms and tucked letters in her windshield wipers like the lovesick fool he once was.  
  
“What do I do, Jughead? How do I fix this?”  
  
“Just leave it alone.”

So, reluctantly, he left it alone. Left spring to become summer, left Betty’s living room for Veronica’s lake house, left June to become July to give way to August, always, always, on Ronnie’s arm.  
  
Classmates slipped cash and IOU’s to each other the second week of class when they passed, a betting pool Veronica had long known about finally cashing out.  
  
Through fall of senior year they maintained as if Betty had never been or gone at all. Nothing about their dynamic seemed to change. If Betty had cared to check, it might have hurt her. She didn’t so it couldn’t and really, her friends reasoned, it must be for the best.  
  
Homecoming at Riverdale High felt empty without the competitive tension, but they managed. So, too, did they manage before winter formal and come junior prom, Betty wore her nicest dress and curled her hair just _so,_ and entered the gym arm-in-arm with two junior girls she tutored, each just as stunning and happy to be there as she was.  
  
She still drove to Jughead’s after the dance, her companions safely left at their respective homes. With her hair knotted and dress punch-stained she threw rocks at his first story window and curled into his beanbag chair, shoving her face into her hands as she began to cry.  
  
“I, uh,”  
  
“Just let me be upset, Juggie.”  
  
He set a soda by her feet and turned his videogames down before he set to playing, casting wary glances in her direction and moving the tissues every now and again. That’s how Betty found herself the next morning, covered in a blanket, feet away from her snoozing best friend.  
  
All in all a vastly better prom.  
  
Veronica took her hands at graduation, her lavender nail polish clashing both of their royal blue robes.  
  
“Betty Cooper,” She exhaled more than said.  
  
“Ronnie,” Betty answered.  
  
Veronica pulled her close, arms tightening around the small of Betty’s back, and after some hesitation, Betty returned the gesture.  
  
“I, uh, hope you do great things, Ron.”  
  
“You too, Betty,” and she pulled away to look at her just for a moment until Archie called Veronica’s name and both their heads whipped around. By the time Betty thought to look down, Veronica had gone, Before she could remember how familiar the situation was, but reversed, before shrill echoes of “Oh, Archiekins,” could flood her senses, Midge took her hand and dragged her to Ethel and Dilton and Moose and Kevin, and everything felt almost complete.

 

Jughead showed up three hours early to her graduation party the next day. It was to keep her company, he said, but mostly to get first dibs on food and they both knew it. Regardless, Betty was glad for the feedback and the laughs.  
  
Just before the party began, as Jughead gathered up his to go boxes, he asked,  
  
“Bets, what made high school good?”  
  
Betty, knowing Jughead not to be a man of sentiment, chose her answer carefully. “I don’t regret anything.” Jughead didn’t miss that she didn’t call it good.  
  
He set down his food and pulled her into a loose sort-of hug. “That was delicious, Cooper. Have a good party.”  
  
Jughead left just before Ethel came up the walk, and Betty felt she knew he’d gorge himself and decompress before heading to Archie’s after his joint gala with Veronica had ended, and he’d stay the night with his best friend before Archie left for some extravagant holiday the next day, probably. Part of it hurt, this intuitive knowledge. To know that this was it, for real, that they four would never again share a booth at Pop’s, would never sneak off to Fox Forest, wouldn’t meet up over breaks home, hurt more than Betty had words for.  
  
Archie chose Veronica. Everyone knew he would. Veronica chose winning. Everyone knew she would. Betty, despite her hurting, despite her instinct, chose herself. Score one, Betty Cooper.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Betty is supposed to be the sweet and forgiving girl next door but im heckin' tired of Archie and Ronnie taking her for granted with no repercussions.
> 
> Also, like, projecting (tm) or whatever.
> 
> HMU on tumblr @ and-a-teeny-tiny-band for some good ol' comics talk.


End file.
